Notes and Editorial Reviews

They don't make collections like this any more! Or so it seems. Yet can musical tastes really have changed so radically from the days when people would patiently turn over a 78rpm record for the second half of Boieldieu's La dame blanche Overture? I think not, and that there must surely be a welcome for such a collection of charmingly melodious, unpretentious and yet well-crafted pieces as on this CD. Paul Paray (1886–1979), conductor of an American orchestra, had a name that never sounded quite as quintessentially French as that of, say, Pierre Monteux, but he was a genuine son of Normandy who in his seventies could still bring out the Gallic warmth, excitement and sparkle of these pieces. I particularly admired the orchestral interplay inRead more the marches Saint-Saens marches and the solo passages in the Offenbach and Rossini overtures. The recording sounds just a shade raw with the violins at the top of their range, but generally the warmth and richness of sound make it quite unbelievable that these recordings are now 30-odd years old.'

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: ( 1 Customer Review )

A Great Reissue of Mercury Living PresenceMay 16, 2015By Robert Abbott (Louisville, KY)See All My Reviews"Paray had a way with French marches! And Mercury had a superb way of recording them. As a march freak, I bought the album for the well known Meyerbeer Coronation March and the Saint-Saens Marche Militaire Francaise. The Offenbach Tales of Hoffman and the Gounod Funeral March of a Marionette and of course the Rossini William Tell were icing on the cake. Amazing what good playing and good recording from 1959 and 1960 could do."Report Abuse